Neru Akita
Akita Neru is an officially recognized derivative, she is acknowledged by Crypton Future Media, the publisher of the Character Vocal Series for''Vocaloid 2'', for commercial use. Her name is a play on words, Akita (亞北) is taken from "飽きた" or "get bored" while Neru (ネル) from "寝る" or "go to bed". Neru is regarded as a "BOUKALOID" (in Japanese, 防火ロイド or 防火LOID) - a play on words. It literally means "Fireproof-loid" and has the same pronunciation as Vocaloid in Japanese. She has a younger brother, Nero. Her voice comes from either a higher pitch of Miku's, or a lower pitch of Rin's. Appearance Neru's design is similar to that of Hatsune Miku. She has blond hair consisting of an odd length of short and long, the long hair is styled into a left side-ponytail held by a blue futuristic ribbon. This does not need to physically touch Neru's hair to keep it in place. She has a stray hair at the top of her head and nose length bangs. Her eyebrows are thick and her eyes are tsurime (upward-pointing) eyelids/eyelashes. On her left upper arm is the red mark "DEN2", its significance is currently unexplained and said to stand for the "anti-Miku advertising agency", rumored to be a supposedly-powerful entity in the music industry of Japan. Due to this, details were intentionally withheld for the safety of Neru's creator. Her top is grey in color and sleeveless with a yellow hem, below her yellow necktie is a triangular cut that shows her navel and the back has two circular holes. The rest of her attire is black with yellow trim. She wears detached sleeves, a pleated skirt with bike shorts and thigh boots. On her left thigh is a garter purse that holds a yellow clamshell cellphone which is presumed to be a Motorola V3X. Personality Neru came to represent the tsundere culture of Vocaloid. The fandom displays her personality mainly as hostile but she is also known to be displayed in a more friendlier manner, such as having a crush on Kagamine Len. Other aspects of Neru is being a representation of a forum/bbs troll, a Miku wannabe, and a anti-hero of the Vocaloid personage. A popular portrayal of her actions is that she's always seen texting on her cellphone or slacking about. According to the creator, she has a dislike for Otaku. Despite Neru being a girl that does things her way, a common fan description is that Neru is employed in a writing agency for a rate of 700 yen per hour. She sometimes speaks in Tohoku dialect or Akita dialect; people speaking in such a dialect usually live or grew up in the Tohoku region. This is a reference to her family name Akita, and the prefecture's name. Biography On October 14 of 2007, when the Hatsune Miku movement was on the rise beyond expectations, a Japanese TV station suddenly broadcasted a program that stereotyped Miku users as "anime freaks without stable work experience". Three days later, Miku's pictures became unsearchable on main search engines such as Google and Yahoo! Japan, and in the following two days, Miku's article was deleted from the Japanese Wikipedia. This news became widespread or "flamed up (炎上した)" on 2ch bulletin boards with the rumor that an advertising agency which had a strong influence in the Japanese music industry was behind the series of "anti-Miku negative campaign," in an attempt to purge Miku and indie musicians from the music trend. Then, numerous comments were posted that denied the rumor, or "put off the fire (消火する)," followed by the phrases "飽きた、寝る。 (Got bored. Going to bed.)" or "寝る、お前らも寝ろよ。 (Gonna go to bed. Follow me, y'all!). Yet those comments drew nothing but negative responses from 2ch netizens. The contributors of such posts were branded as "puppets of the agency" The netizens joked about the "puppets" and made a spoof character for these posts as "Akita Neru". Later Smith Hioka, an illustrator, finalized the concept art of Neru. She came to represent the tsundere culture of Vocaloid.12 Google and Yahoo! Japan announced that the search failure was a technical problem and had nothing to do with the advertising agency or the TV program. The Wikipedia page removal was the result of copyright violation, which also had no relation to the agency.3 Still, the rumor about the "Miku-hating agency" persists within the Japanese fandom presently. On April 1 2008, Crypton adopted Neru as an official derivative character of Hatsune Miku.4 This, along with other derivatives such as: Hachune Miku, Yowane Haku, Sakine Meiko, and Tako Luka.56 Category:Characters Category:Female Characters